Search

The first time she played the silver flute she felt a surge of energy and pure emotion, the likes of which she had never experienced before. It was the first time she felt a way “out” or a way in depending on how you look at it without the aid of hallucinogens. It was so clean. She couldn’t get enough. She played for hours never looking up to acknowledge the people around her much less eat or drink. It was as if the flute played itself and she was naught but the air it took to breathe. The keys were soft and soundless under her fingers; effortlessly gauging the rhythm of her song. She played a furious Hungarian sweep without fail and felt herself a virtuoso. Then a melancholy “Greensleeves” found her lips and she fell deep into the spell of the first octave of that seductive minor scale.

Far away from her so-called friends, her family, and alone with this music an invisible man became her mentor. Some girls grew up believing in a Prince Charming. Her fantasy was created by books. In particular, books given to her by an influential lover whom she imagined was grooming her for their future together. Part suffering writer, part vampire, part seductive intellectual pedophile and part lesbian poet – he introduced her to the night, to the moon and to the power of melody. He could have been her phantom had she known such a thing as that existed.

“Ah, Greensleeves now farewell adieu

To g-d I pray to prosper thee

For I am still your lover true

Come once again and love me.”

It is during the week of the big moon now seven years and a nine-month trip to a foreign country later that she makes her trek to the tombs. It’s really just a duplex racquetball court in the local park that produces ethereal acoustic effects. She chooses this time with the knowledge that the light of her moon will be brightest now. Just off center in the sky. Between the hours of 12 a.m. and 3 a.m. that giant orb is her lantern and her companion. She likes to say that porthole is open while human shadows are cast directly and nevermore. It is quite a dangerous thing to traipse about in the light of street lamp, yet in the beams of moonlight one is free to roam peacefully without fear of being anything but blue.

She is a petite thing. Her once mousy brown auburn hair hangs to her waist, tied back with a fresh twig she has just plucked from an olive tree. She feels this is appropriate hair accessory for the moment. She believe her thick, untamed eyebrows to be her best feature as they frame her fiery green eyes and give a fiendishly demonic finish to her round face. People say she looks beautiful when she smiles. Probably because it’s such a rare occurrence. At any rate, she flashes her piercing fangs with pride. The dentist calls them a cosmetic defect but she’s under the impression that being defective is better than being normal at this point in her almost adulthood. Being a child of the night keeps her skin pale and ever so soft. She secretly wishes to be bronzed when she spots a fine desert specimen of womanliness but the smell of burning leather always sends her running for the safety of the shadows. The sun kills!

In the privacy of her own private tomb, not more than 500 yards from the nearest intersection, she prepares “The Music of the Night”. She’s older now and has been officially inducted into the world of Broadway musical numbers, opera and ballet. She begins with this song ritually in search of the phantom she’s absolutely certain exists now though she knew nothing of the sort only a few short years ago. She ends with her own version of tele-communication – a high-pitched trilling which usually sent the neighborhood hounds into a frenzy but did little for humans unlike herself.

She believes sometimes in the great powers of the luminescence surrounding her. Bestowing upon herself the ability to make contact or to send a secret message to a faraway lover. She finds her inner light to be brightest of all. Mostly, she’s just blowing the day away, for the night is her sanctuary. The place where she can shine without fear of blinding. To a passer-by some of her found sounds might even be a bit annoying.

She never actually intends to meet anyone here. But the effects of the moon and her enchanting music have induced more than a few memorable encounters. Tonight, she plays a special tune in honor of the full moon. When the sky turns midnight blue and the sidewalk glows and it’s colder than it’s ever been she says, the porthole is open. The porthole in her tomb is the gateway to dimensions lesser in number and higher in tune. To rest and to perform the calling, she sends all visitors to flee. Inviting only one to join her, she does not feel the cold and she is not afraid.